The Fairy-Land of Science eBook

And now we have reached the end of the travels of
our drop of water. We have seen it drawn up by
the fairy “heat,” invisible into the sky;
there fairy “cohesion” seized it and formed
it into water-drops and the giant, “gravitation,”
pulled it down again to the earth. Or, if it
rose to freezing regions, the fairy of “crystallization”
built it up into snow-crystals, again to fall to the
earth, and either to be melted back into water by heat,
or to slide down the valleys by force of gravitation,
till it became squeezed into ice. We have detected
it, when invisible, forming a veil round our earth,
and keeping off the intense heat of the sun’s
rays by day, or shutting it in by night. We have
seen it chilled by the blades of grass, forming sparkling
dew-drops or crystals of hoar-frost, glistening in
the early morning sun; and we have seen it in the
dark underground, being drunk up greedily by the roots
of plants. We have started with it from the tropics,
and travelled over land and sea, watching it forming
rivers, or flowing underground in springs, or moving
onwards to the high mountains or the poles, and coming
back again in glaciers and icebergs. Through
all this, while it is being carried hither and thither
by invisible power, we find no trace of its becoming
worn out, or likely to rest from its labours.
Ever onwards it goes, up and down, and round and round
the world, taking many forms, and performing many
wonderful feats. We have seen some of the work
that it does, in refreshing the air, feeding the plants,
giving us clear, sparkling water to drink, and carrying
matter to the sea; but besides this, it does a wonderful
work in altering all the face of our earth. This
work we shall consider in the next lecture, on “The
two great Sculptors — Water and Ice.”

Week 13

Lecture V. Thetwogreatsculptors
— waterandice.

In our last lecture we saw that water can exist in
three forms:—­ 1st, as an invisible vapour;
2nd, as liquid water; 3rd, as solid snow and ice.

To-day we are going to take the two last of these
forms, water and ice, and speak of them as sculptors.

To understand why they deserve this name we must first
consider what the work of a sculptor is. If you
go into a statuary yard you will find there large
blocks of granite, marble, and other kinds of stone,
hewn roughly into different shapes; but if you pass
into the studio, where the sculptor himself is at work
you will find beautiful statues, more or less finished;
and you will see that out of rough blocks of stone
he has been able to cut images which look like living
forms. You can even see by their faces whether
they are intended to be sad, or thoughtful, or gay,
and by their attitude whether they are writhing in
pain, or dancing with joy, or resting peacefully.
How has all this history been worked out from the
shapeless stone? It has been done by the sculptor’s
chisel. A piece chipped off here, a wrinkle
cut there, a smooth surface rounded off in another
place, so as to give a gentle curve; all these touches
gradually shape the figure and mould it out of the
rough stone, first into a rude shape and afterwards,
by delicate strokes, into the form of a living being.